bill hAll Star

Let's make a deal. I won't mock the idea of it if the idea of it doesn't involve calling a GM and owner stupid or cheap for not wanting to sink millions of dollars into shuffling deck chairs around and paying millions of dollars to do so to find the right mix. If you want to think that adding an older, mediocre player will fix things, fine. Calling the owner and GM stupid for not doing such things is overboard. I'm not saying that because I feel like defending DS and MA...I just thing it's kinda weird. And yeah, generally teams win divisions and get to the playoffs due to talent. Adding different personalities can maybe get you over the top. Everyone hated Curt Schilling and the BoSox won plenty of championships with him. Pujols knows the Cardinal Way™ but suddenly his team filled with veterans in Anaheim is garbage. The Brewers aren't in "get me over the top mode." They're in the mode of maybe accidentally stealing a playoff spot with 83 wins and if Mark wants to spend his own money on Phillips or Kinsler, I'd be OK with it...but I'm not going to call he or DS fools for not wanting to part with $ or future prospects to chase this idea.

31% of Cooper's at bats in the minors came in either Colorado Springs or in rookie ball (Arizona or Helena) when he was an advanced college player teeing off on 18-20 year olds. Broxton hit .287 with a .924 OPS as a 26 year old in Colorado Springs last year. Too add to that, Broxton, Sogard, Brinson, De Jesus, Bandy, Phillips, Orf all hit well over .300 in Colorado Springs this year and I'd expect all of them to not do that in the majors. Go and look at basically the entire Rockies roster. All of their .300 hitters are .270 hitters on the road (sometimes worse).

Yep. Sometimes the right mix is just needed. It's okay if you don't believe that. Some do, some don't. But you don't have to attemp to belittle those that do. Your act has gotten stale. I'm not trying to belittle you necessarily...I'm just wondering how the heck you or anyone knows what this mix is that makes other players better and also why the teams that the 3 or 4 guys in question that are supposed to trickle down succes currently reside on are all terrible. OK, I guess it sounds like belittling. I just don't understand having the GM/owner flipping players around and paying money to do so and you can belittle them to believe that adding different players will magically resurrect other players...because...trickle-down.

We need to trade for Curtis Granderson now so his trickle-down effect makes Villar learn to contact the baseball at the plate again. Or bring in Kinsler so his leadership gets Aguilar to transform his defense. Am I doing this right?

Swarzak pitches clean 8th to lead Brewers to victory I'm not going to go much further down this insane rabbit hole...all I will say is that Garrett Cooper was actively placed in AAA by the Yankees until about 5 injuries occurred.

I'd be willing to bet 70-80% of the current Brewers roster would have a .300 minors batting average if they were allowed to spend their age 25 and 26 seasons and a majority of their minors career in Colorado Springs and the PCL.

There is a chance you add those guys and nothing changes. But you just never know the trickle down effect of those two players added in August. You add two guys that are professionals to say the least and maybe, just maybe, the rest of the team starts clicking again as well. $5-10 million is no chump change but when your payroll is $60+ million and you've had good attendance numbers during this season, I think MA could justify doing this to see if this would spark this team and get them hot again. As I'm typing this, I'm sure Broxton and Villar will catch fire and all will be golden, but chances are, they won't. Gotta try when the opportunities are there and I feel as though this was an opportunity to make the playoffs. Yeah, those pros pro professional [insert more cliches] ball players have really provided a trickle down spark to the Braves and Mets, respectively, this season. There is a post that they are actually trying to add and if they traded for Phillips or Kinsler tomorrow I'd be fine with it given that it is Mark's money and not mine...but I cannot fathom getting worked up about this and actually thinking that these moves will do anything.

Hernan Perez seems to be mostly taking over at 2B and is nearly a wash with Brandon Phillips. You'd be paying $4-5 million to get a guy that strikes out a little bit less. Broxton has been just as hot as Granderson of late and they have similar. A platoon may be the best of worlds but you're paying $5 million for a platoon upgrade on a guy that is a bad defender in CF which is probably where they'd play him. I've actually expressed interest in overpaying for upgrades in 2018 and '19 given the rest of payroll is so low, but that's $10 million for 2 guys that may not even be upgrades on a team that seems to be not very good. I hope that Mark is willing to overpay a bit for stuff over the next 2 years but at this point in the season I'm fine if he doesn't want to dump $10 million into upgrades that we aren't even sure are upgrades on a team that currently has an 8% chance at the playoffs per TeamRankings.

The 2017 bullpen, specifically Feliz over Holland. Stearns traded away his entire bullpen save for Knebel for a king's ransom last year. I don't think there was such an expectation to be in contention this year so he was throwing darts. Holland has a $10 million option that is about to turn into $15 million based on performance. Is that worth it at this point? Probably...but these sort of criticisms probably laden with hindsight in suggestion that we should have dumped $10-15 million more for a "buy low dart" in a rebuilding year that suggest we should have beaten out 10-15 other teams bidding for the guy are kinda out there. I don't want to make it seem like I'm defending every move, but when people are suggesting that the guy basically walk on water and nail every offseason risk taken are really going to be unsatisfied no matter what happens.

I can't believe I'm doing this already on such a tiny sample to debunk some silly fans putting Cooper in Cooperstown already (lol), but he's struck out a ton, has barely taken a walk, and his BABIP is .500. If his first 40 ABs suggest what he is for the future, it's a guy that is not on an MLB roster.

It's entirely possible that teams are asking for a little bit more than we think on Phillips, Kinsler, and now Walker or that some of them didn't make it our way on waivers. I'm not sure I'd even blame Mark if he didn't want to burn $5 million Phillips, Walker, or Kinsler (Kinsler makes you decide on either $8 million for this year + buyout or 13 million if you keep him around) for very modest upgrades on what Hernan offers you at 2B. Hernan is a plus defender there and maybe loses a bit in OBP compared to those guys (and more in power to Walker). Mark clearly is willing to pay when the team is contending but if he said he didn't want to pay $5-15 million to win our 79th game this season instead of the 78 that we'll probably end up with without adding a 2B...I mean, that's pretty reasonable to me. I'd be happy to hear that Stearns is advising him of this.

Has been for the entire season. Hasn't made him do a dang thing other than find a couple secondary bullpen arms that are eh, other than Swazak so far. Don't expect a thing to be done other than MA to count the money rolling in from the attendance this season. Yes, yes...the guy that gave $40 million to Jeff Suppan is just in it to roll in the profits right now.

Results are obviously the way that a GM needs to be judged in the end, but luckily, the window of time is large enough that Stearns will make enough moves that the process will be shown in the results at a high clip. I'm not going to waste my time telling myself or beating the drum that dropping Scooter or signing Feliz were bad moves. The process was right even if the results were wrong (Scooter is coming back down to earth this month - might end up not being the end of the world). Without the type of process to take financial risks on guys with superior talent but injury or track record issues like Feliz, we'd not have Thames. This is good/great process. I hope we sign another flamethrower for $5 million next year and see if he can figure it out. Same with Scooter. It isn't just that Stearns "loves versatility" but Scooter is truly not good on defense at any position other than 2B and he's an OK corner outfielder. Given that knowledge, Villar had shown he was a better hitter at the time than Scooter and therefore was fine for 2B rendering Scooter useless as an above-average hitting utility IF that was very, very bad at 3B (we didn't need OF) and therefore he was not necessary anymore. Again, that process was sound. We didn't know that Scooter was going to do this or that Villar was going to collapse. I'm not sure a scout or GM in the world would have predicted this before the season. It's still very possible that Scooter is a slightly improved hitter but remains a poor defender at every position but 2B going forward, still justifying Stearns' decision. His ISO is up and that is basically the difference between now and the past. Is it because he's a launch angle guy now adding more HR or is it just some luck that he's had some wall scrapers at equally/better HR park of GABP? We'll find out. He's been pretty bad this past month. If Scooter is now an .800 OPS hitter (previously .750 with the Brewers) that has to be shielded from LHP and can only play 2B at an average level...is that something that you would want on the Brewers going forward? Also, to add: "I don't mind letting Scooter go but I did have an issue with not getting anything for him in a trade" pretty much proves why Stearns' process was right at the time. I'm sure they shopped him, but given that teams knew that the Brewers would be starting Villar at 2B coupled with the fact that most other teams did not covet Gennett show you that his value around the league was quite low and that nobody would have traded for him.

I don't think Detroit is going to give any of their overpaid players away for free. They probably will just do nothing in free agency over the next few years so they'll probably just let these guys rot/expire, especially the ones with some current value (Verlander, Upton). I may be gauging the new ownership wrong, but I think if this new ownership was worried about cutting costs over the next few years, they may be more aggressively giving guys away for free or even giving up assets to rid themselves of players. Aside from the optics issue, I think it's mostly that they might as well hold on to Verlander, even Zimmermann, etc. until maybe there is a chance to give them up for something. Maybe it's 2 years from now and Zimmermann has found a new pitch and is an above average pitcher again...something like that. They're under the luxury tax threshold next year and will probably just be quiet in free agency. Each year, they'll unload guys even if just for small returns as the contracts go down.

Scooter never had a year in the stratosphere of what Villar did (until this year) and he had 3.5 years to show it. His one year that was close was his first few months in the MLB where I think a lot of people can write that off to the league not having the book on him. Villar is not a good defender, but now that Scooter is playing a lot of positions, he is not either. I think if you would have told me Scooter would put up a .750 forever and be a below-average utility player defensively (but isn't really playing the positions of SS and rarely plays 3B that we need him to back up), I wouldn't have kept him at any cost. We don't need backup OF. Scooter has been OK in the outfield and really, really bad at 3B in his 53 innings there this year. Also to add: Scooter still cannot really hit LHP, which is fine, but also cuts into his utility man status. Also also to add: He's starting to cool down. You have to give him the benefit of the rest of the season and into next year, but it's possible that this season is a blip on the radar just like Villar's 2016 might have been.

Sure, that's fine but that is not really the argument that we were originally having. Maybe I'd prefer Kinsler for August through October of 2017 (and Villar would come #2 of those 4, as bad as he's been) but as a realistic fan that knows the playoff chances are slim, I'd still prefer to not give something up to get Kinsler given this year's playoff run is unlikely and he's only getting older next year.

Why not call Yuni Betancourt? In theory, he could also "get hot."

What's really impressive is that De Jesus has put together a full career of 4 partial seasons (545 plate appearances) where his stat line is about on par with Villar's terrible 2017 season. Well Villar is going to continue to be Villar-level bad. We're in August now. and IF Dejesus is also Villar-level bad then you're no worse off than continuing to play Villar. At least try something different. This is all assuming (which I think we can) that Sogards fall from grace will continue and Perez will never learn how to take a pitch Because we know what to expect from Sogard and De Jesus and likely Kinsler given all of their ages. We know it won't be much better. There is a lot of data to back that up. Yes, I will agree with you that Villar is probably broken for this season and we likely also know that his numbers will be bad. However, if you said "I have a crystal ball and one of those 4 players ended up as August and September offensive MVP for the Brewers" I would wager 60% of my money on Villar, maybe 30% on Kinsler, 9% on Sogard, and 1% on De Jesus. Why? Because Jonathan Villar was a highly regarded prospect at one point and has actually produced results before and therefore there is actually a reasonable probability that he can do it again. Kinsler is an OK option because he once was good but is getting old. Sogard and Ivan De Jesus are 100% known commodities of AAA journeyman. the only reason people want to try them is because it's something and less frustrating to the human eye to watch when they're struggling in comparison to Villar.

What's really impressive is that De Jesus has put together a full career of 4 partial seasons (545 plate appearances) where his stat line is about on par with Villar's terrible 2017 season.

Colorado Springs (and PCL). They brought Sogard up and he caught fire for a while, try it with DeJesus. I'm open to it. Broxton - .385 Cooper - .366 Brinson - .363 Bandy - .310 Phillips - .301 Garrett Cooper is leading the pack at .240 in 26 ABs in the majors out of that group. Something tells me that the Sogard streak was complete luck/randomness. De Jesus's career MLB batting average is .240.

Colorado Springs (and PCL).

I think this is said with the benefit of hindsight.... we were in pretty good shape at the break, then won our first series afterward. Noone knew at that time that losing the last game of that series would be the start of the massive slide of the next couple of weeks. I don't think anyone was sitting here on July 15th thinking that massive moves needed to be made right then and there. I started the Kinsler thread on July 18. Many others were ready to move on from Villar, especially from leadoff spot. Kinsler was terrible in July (.620 OPS)...barely better than Villar.

Pick up the $5mil option and trade him for a low-A boom-or-bust prospect if nothing else. Somebody will want him for $5mil.

I just find it interesting that when we're going to make a big "buy" trade in theory, the proposed deals on this board are always the ones where we give up the prospects that we've soured on or don't have high expectations for. Even the lesser guys we give up that we may not think are a huge deal (for a Kinsler deal for example) might come back to bite us. We want as many darts as possible to throw. I basically fully endorsed the 2008 and 2011-era trades where we gave up several All-Stars and 10 WAR players and some of them seemed to be throw-ins or lower ceiling guys at the time. Look at where this team is right now and it isn't even close to 2008 and especially 2011 on the growth arc...plus the Cubs are a little bit more longstanding competition than our rivals were in those years. A few Kinsler-esque trades are pointless. I highly doubt that it moves the needle and it removes a dart that we can throw to be a good player down the road in our system. Going for Gray and more is also foolish in my opinion. We will have taken everything built from when we decided to sell in '15 and pin our hopes to '18 and '19 where the chances of a division and/or World Series are still pretty bleak. "Yeah, but we could have done it without giving up Brinson." Sure, we avoided dealing Lucroy and one or two other assumed key prospects in 2011 and we had a decent team from 2012 and beyond but zero farm system to get back over the top.